NEWS BITS & BITES

BRITAIN DECLARES PEACEFULLY PROTESTING GRANDPARENTS TO BE TERRORISTS

NIGEL MORRIS AND JONATHAN BROWN, INDEPENDENT, UK - Two grandmothers from
Yorkshire face up to a year in prison after becoming the first people to
be arrested under the Government's latest anti-terror legislation. Helen
John, 68, and Sylvia Boyes, 62, both veterans of the Greenham Common
protests 25 years ago, were arrested on Saturday after deliberately
setting out to highlight a change in the law which civil liberties
groups say will criminalize free speech and further undermine the right
to peaceful demonstration.

Under the little-noticed legislation, which came into effect last week,
protesters who breach any one of 10 military bases across Britain will
be treated as potential terrorists and face up to a year in jail or
L5,000 fine. . .

Campaigners expressed their outrage yesterday at Charles Clarke's new
law, which they say is yet another draconian attempt to crack down on
legitimate protest under the guise of the war on terror. In October last
year a protester in Whitehall was convicted for merely reading out the
names of British soldiers killed in Iraq. And at the Labor Party
conference in September the Government suffered severe embarrassment
when Walter Wolfgang, a veteran peace activist who survived the Nazis,
was detained for heckling Jack Straw.

Mrs John and Mrs Boyes, who have 10 grandchildren between them, were
held by Ministry of Defence police after walking 15 ft across the sentry
line at the United States military base at Menwith Hill in North
Yorkshire. They were held for 12 hours before being released on police
bail. They will learn whether they are to face prosecution when they
return to Harrogate police station on 15 April.

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/legal/article356033.ece

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ISRAELIS ABUSES MEMBER OF PALESTINE CABINET

HAARETZ - The Shin Bet security service on Thursday released Khaled Abu
Arafa, the Palestinian Minister for Jerusalem Affairs, a few hours after
they detained him as he made his way from Jerusalem to Azzariyeh, close
to the eastern part of the city. Border Policemen in jeeps appeared to
have been waiting for Abu Arafa, Hamas officials said, and stopped his
car as it headed toward Azzariyeh. Abu Arafa, an independent in the
Hamas-led government, was apparently en route to the office of his Fatah
predecessor Ziad Abu Ziad for a handover ceremony. His bodyguard was
also detained. "They stopped the car and asked the minister to get out
and when he refused they forced him by pointing the rifle in his face,"
a Hamas source said.

http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/spages/703296.html

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GOP, PAYING OFF TELECOMS, PROPOSES BILL THAT WOULD BEGIN END TO OPEN
INTERNET

DECLAN MCCULLAGH, CNET NEWS - In a modest victory for broadband
providers, a highly anticipated bill in the U.S. Congress does not
include specific rules saying that some Internet sites must not be
favored over others. Rep. Joe Barton, a Texas Republican who heads the
committee responsible for telecommunications legislation, released the
text Monday and said that a hearing had been scheduled for Thursday at
10 am ET. . . A November draft of Barton's bill explicitly said
broadband providers "may not block, or unreasonably impair or interfere
with" Internet access. The final version, on the other hand, simply
gives the Federal Communications Commission the authority to set rules
and publish violations.

Under network neutrality, the companies that own the broadband pipes do
not configure their networks in a way that plays favorites. They may not
be allowed to transmit their own services at faster speeds, for example,
or to charge net content and application companies a fee for similar
fast delivery.

Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, eBay, Amazon.com, Skype and some advocacy
groups have been pressing Congress for strict laws requiring Net
neutrality, and had been hoping that Barton's bill--called the
Communications Opportunity, Promotion and Enhancement Act--would mandate
it. . .

Sen. Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, took aim at Barton's proposal on
Monday. "This legislation begins the construction of a multilayered,
toll-strewn information superhighway that is out of sync with what has
made the Internet work: access for all," said Wyden, who introduced his
own bill earlier this month mandating Net neutrality. Digital rights
watchdog Public Knowledge added that Barton's bill does not "contain
strong enough penalties to discourage misbehavior."

http://news.com.com/2100-1036_3-6054567.html


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70% OF BUSH TAX CUT BENEFITS WENT TO TOP TWO PERCENT

CNN - President Bush's tax cuts for investment income have significantly
lowered the tax burden on the richest Americans, reducing taxes on
incomes of more than $10 million by an average of about $500,000,
according to a report Wednesday. An analysis of Internal Revenue Service
data by The New York Times found that the benefit of the lower taxes on
investments was more concentrated on the very wealthiest Americans than
the benefits of President Bush's two previous tax cuts. . . According to
the study, taxpayers with incomes greater than $10 million reduced their
investment tax bill by an average of about $500,000 in 2003, and their
total tax savings, which included the two Bush tax cuts on compensation,
nearly doubled, to slightly more than $1 million. These taxpayers, whose
average income was $26 million, paid about the same share of their
income in income taxes as those making $200,000 to $500,000 because of
the lowered rates on investment income.

Americans with annual incomes of $1 million or more reaped 43 percent of
all the savings on investment taxes in 2003. The savings for these
taxpayers averaged about $41,400 each. The newspaper's tax cut analysis
showed that more than 70 percent of the tax savings on investment income
went to the top 2 percent, about 2.6 million taxpayers.

http://money.cnn.com/2006/04/05/news/tax_cuts/index.htm?section=cnn_topstories


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STUDENTS, ACLU SUE OVER CAMPUS DRUG LAW

LIZETH CAZARES, CALIFORNIA AGGIE (UC-Davis)- Students for Sensible Drug
Policy, a national student-interest organization, has partnered with the
American Civil Liberties Union to attempt to stop a law that denies
students with drug offenses the possibility of attaining financial aid.
The U.S. Congress' Higher Education Act provision, passed in 1998, has
blocked nearly 200,000 students who have had a drug conviction from
obtaining financial aid. Since its creation, the Students for Sensible
Drug Policy have worked for its removal, claiming that the provision is
"unfair" and "unconstitutional."

According to Kris Krane, executive director for the Students for
Sensible Drug Policy, the provision is "unconstitutional" since it
violates the nation's Double Jeopardy law, which states that an
individual cannot be punished twice for the same crime. "Students are
already suffering the consequences through probation, fines, criminal
record and punishment through their own schools," Krane said. . .

The ACLU has filed a lawsuit on behalf of SSDP against the Department of
Education and has named Secretary Margaret Spelling in the suit to
retract the provision. "This will be a fairly drawn-out process, but we
will continue to fight this as long as it takes," Krane said.

http://www.uwire.com/content//topnews040406002.html

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FOUR OUT OF TEN CITY KIDS HAVE SEX BY AGE 14

BILL HUTCHINSON NY DAILY NEWS - A new survey shows four out of 10 city
kids say they have had intercourse before age 14, and have engaged in
oral and even anal sex by 17. "This study makes clear that urban young
adults engage in a variety of sexual behavior beyond vaginal
intercourse," said Dr. Danielle Ompad, who authored the survey for The
New York Academy of Medicine. . .

The study, published in The Archives of Sexual Behavior, examined the
sexual habits of 2,311 Baltimore youths. But Ompad said, "I don't think
other cities would be too different." The study showed that 42% had
engaged in vaginal intercourse by the age of 14. About 14% of kids said
they had sex before the age of 13, a 9% jump from a similar survey by
the Centers for Disease Control in 1995.

http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/406126p-343777c.html

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TYPICAL WORKER HAS LESS THAN $25,000 SAVED FOR RETIREMENT

EILEEN ALT POWELL AP - The Employee Benefit Research Institute's annual
retirement confidence survey, released Tuesday, found that about 68
percent of workers are confident about having adequate funds for a
comfortable retirement. . . At the same time, more than half of all
workers say they've saved less than $25,000 toward retirement, according
to the Washington, D.C., based research group. Even among workers 55 and
older, more than four in 10 have retirement savings under $25,000.

He said that the poor savings performance was especially troubling
because it comes as many of the nation's employers are eliminating the
defined benefit plans - better known as pensions - that have buoyed the
retirements of current workers' parents and grandparents. Many companies
also are eliminating retiree health care coverage or asking retirees to
contribute more for it. . .

As would be expected, older workers generally have more set aside than
younger workers, with 12 percent of those 55 and older reporting account
balances of $100,000 to $249,999, and 26 percent with accounts of
$250,000 and up.

He suggests that people who are comfortable with managing their own
accounts can do well with online calculators, including the Ballpark
Estimate calculator that can be found on EBRI's sister site at

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/R/RETIREMENT_CONFIDENCE?SITE=
MTGRE&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT


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WHO'S GONNA SECURE YOU FROM HOMELAND SECURITY?

ANTHONY McCARTNEY, TAMPA TRIBUNE - When he wasn't sending pornographic
movies to and asking for explicit photos from a teenage girl in Polk
County, a Maryland man was bragging about his job as a spokesman at the
U.S. Department of Homeland Security, law enforcement officers said.

The revelation - actually made to a detective posing as a 14-year-old
girl - resulted in the arrest of 55-year-old Brian J. Doyle at his
Silver Spring, Md., home Tuesday night, officials said.

During his Internet chats, Doyle quickly revealed his name and job, and
he sent his office and government-issued cell phone numbers. The
information allowed detectives to quickly verify Doyle's identity, the
Polk County Sheriff's Office announced Tuesday night.

Doyle moved quickly in other regards, officials said, sending enough
sexually explicit messages and movie clips that they were able to secure
a warrant for his arrest on 23 felony counts roughly two weeks after he
responded to the detective's profile. . .

Doyle, a deputy press secretary, has been at the department since it was
created in 2002. He started as a spokesman at the Transportation Safety
Administration. The charges against Doyle are the second involving a
Homeland Security official and alleged improper sexual conduct toward a
minor in Central Florida in the past six months.

http://news.tbo.com/news/metro/MGBB3U7ZMLE.html

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NOLA LEVEES DON'T MEET FEMA STANDARDS

NY TIMES - New Orleans's levees do not meet the standards that the
Federal Emergency Management Agency requires for its flood protection
program, federal officials said yesterday - and they added that the
problem would take as much as $6 billion to fix. FEMA has long based its
flood planning on whether an area is protected against a flood that
might have a 1 percent chance of occurring in any year, also known as a
100-year flood. Without that certification, the agency's flood maps have
to treat the entire levee system as if it were not there at all, which
means that people hoping to build in the affected areas might have to
rebuild their homes at elevations of 15 or even 30 feet above sea level
in order to meet new federal building standards.

But since Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, the agency has
toughened its 100-year standard, based on new information about land
subsidence and the increasing severity and frequency of hurricanes in
the Gulf of Mexico. There is also new data about weak soils in the area
and the failure of some of the city's floodwalls.

As a result, the levees that the Army Corps of Engineers is now building
will not meet the new FEMA standard. Donald Powell, the federal
coordinator for Gulf Coast rebuilding, said Thursday that the Corps now
believes it cannot meet that standard without spending additional
billions to upgrade the flood protection system still further.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/31/us/nationalspecial/31levees.html?_r=1&oref=login

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64 percent of Americans "want all or some of the U.S. troops in Iraq to come home now," according to a new USA Today/Gallup Poll.
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Six senators have signed onto a bipartisan bill to curb the Pentagon's plans to increase out-of-pocket healthcare costs on military retirees. Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) said, "Especially in a time of war, it is unthinkable that the administration would even consider dramatically increasing healthcare costs for those who have sacrificed for our country."
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In a move "decried by some as state-sponsored segregation," Nebraska’s conservative state legislature has divided the Omaha school system into three districts: "one mostly black, one predominantly white and one largely Hispanic."
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FEMA's massive post-Katrina housing program has produced "vast sums of waste and misspent funds," now likely to "top $1 billion and perhaps much more," a series of government audits show.
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And finally, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution has some good advice for today's college students: "Lesson 1: Don’t run across a college campus wearing a ninja mask. Lesson 2: If you must, don’t run past a group of federal law enforcement officers."
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